


One, A Diner in Portland

by thatbluenote



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Clint Barton, BAMF Natasha Romanov, BAMF Nick Fury, Background Tony Stark - Freeform, Canon-Typical Violence, Clintasha - Freeform, Codenames, Deaf Clint Barton, Diners, Explicit Language, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt Clint Barton, Hydra (Marvel), Inspired by Fanfiction, Milkshakes, Nick Fury is Not Amused, POV Clint Barton, Portland Oregon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Radios, Steve Rogers (mentioned) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 02:45:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14439789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatbluenote/pseuds/thatbluenote
Summary: He was going to kill Nat for this.The gunner’s nest, she’d sent in a coded message after Leipzig. This was the right place, the diner in Portland.So where is the fucking bomber?*Clint goes on a brief personal mission to retrieve something and remembers his first visit to a diner years before, with Natasha and Nick Fury.





	One, A Diner in Portland

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [we were emergencies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/405828) by [gyzym](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyzym/pseuds/gyzym). 



> This takes place after Civil War, but with flashbacks to an earlier time, a little before the first Avengers movie.
> 
> Inspired by the heartbreakingly perfect we were emergencies by gyzym. Her genius is the sunlight I merely borrow for this moon’s pale fire (with apologies to Shakespeare). I don’t eliminate the possibility that Clint’s wife and family exist in the universe of this fic, but I didn’t write them in, either. This fic takes place a while after gyzym’s story, but contains flashbacks to a time mentioned in her story when Clint tried to calm himself to sleep:
> 
> “Clint goes to bed, and doesn't sleep. He just lays beneath the sheets for hours, crisp white linens in a clean open room, staring up at the ceiling and counting his breaths. One, a diner in Portland and Natasha grinning at him through a split lip; two, a bunker in New Mexico…”  
> -we were emergencies by gyzym  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/405828

His first thought is, _Where is the fucking bomber_?

Large, empty parking lot with four cars, squat and unremarkable blue-roofed diner. Weedy, empty lot to one side. Silent trailer park just beyond the line of fencing behind the building.

Definitely no gleaming silver B-17 Warbird perched on little cement stilts.

He was going to kill Nat. _The gunner’s nest_ , she’d sent in a coded message after Leipzig. After she and Cap went into exile.

This was the right place. Wrong year.

*

_The old plane’s wings gleam dull silver in the wet, gray afternoon light. A Portland rain, the kind that never really falls, mists everywhere and nowhere. The bomber is some kind of tourist attraction for the diner, a relic without even an engine, but he can’t help but speculate idly as they wait. “Screw all the SHIELD tech. I wanna fly that thing.”_

_Her eyes narrow but she doesn’t look at him. “Don’t let Cap hear you say that.”_

_Fury’s eyes flicker to them both in warning. They are waiting out a pair of low-level Hydra agents who are loading something in a van idling by the freight container behind the diner. The container’s doors hinge back and forth, complaining with rust, a tiny echo punctuating the quiet of the parking lot. Fury hates it when they get chatty on these little side missions._

_She smirks and mutters anyway, "You want to take the joyride, you have to listen to the lecture on the sacrifices made by our country’s finest.”_

*

Clint knew she wanted him to come here for something. When they’d been here the first time, the behemoth, unmissable World War II relic seemed like a fixture. Hadn’t it been here since the 1950s or some shit? There was a blurb on the menu about it.

Where the hell did an entire B-17 Bomber go? Rough patches on the pavement showed where the plane’s supporting concrete pylons had been jackhammered down to nothing.

Of _course_ , Nat would send him back here. But he couldn’t very well retrieve something if the plane was fucking _gone_.

*

_“I’ll let Steve fly. I just want to get in that turret.” There’s a cruel elegance to the curve of the bomber’s glass nose cone, right where Clint would sit; it would be just like flying, barely a plank of platform beneath the gunner’s seat, just glass on all sides. The roads and the countryside spread out beneath him, distant and green, perfect. Targeted._

_“It’s called the gunner’s nest,” Fury hisses. “And shut it.”_

_“Oh, perfect for a little birdie like you,” Natasha whispers, amused._

_Clint bites back a retort and hones in on Fury’s line of sight. They’re listening for the engine of the van. Any minute now they’ll finish loading the cargo and will drive around front._

_It will take him a second to nock an arrow. Less than a second, less than an inhale. It rests in the holster by his side, the bow not even fully extended._

_In his focused state, he also sees the curls in Nat’s hair beading with droplets from the autumn rain around them as fine as mist. At the exact second he starts to itch with boredom, she turns a sly, sardonic look at him and makes the smallest, subtlest little tweeting of a bird sound._

Clint grimaced, remembering. Fury had bought him a milkshake that day that tasted so good he almost didn’t mind the screaming pain in his triceps from arrow after arrow after  _arrow_ , and the terrible afterlife of that fight, the way it burned into his cortex...

It wasn’t like that anymore. Nat had taught him so much.

That was almost a decade ago now. That had been, maybe, the first time.

Clint crossed the blacktop toward the diner’s front entrance, windblown cherry blossom petals sticking to the soles of his shoes.

He took a seat at the counter. “One chocolate malted, please.”

“Sure thing, hon.” The tall, dark-haired waitress eyed him with vague curiosity as she jotted it down on a little pad. She was about the same age as Clint, maybe a little younger, lanky and slouching down to the counter. “You want a menu, too?”

 

_He can't hold in a snort of laughter. Fury turned to give him the evil eye, but in that same second there was a little snick of a sound and Natasha sprinted away, rounding the corner to where the van was no longer idling._

_“They're cutting the fence to the alley. Cover the entrance,” Fury gritted out, turning to run after her._

 

“Nah, I’ll just take a cheeseburger and fries.” She nodded, scribbling and then ripping the paper off of her pad. She straightened up and turned to pass his order into the kitchen.

“Shouldn’t be long.” From her full height, nearly six foot tall, she looked down and flashed him a friendly but bored smile, all red lipstick and sharp eyelashes. _Had she been here before, then?_ He’s dressed in civilian clothes, though that air of military readiness still sticks to him, he knows that much. Maybe she recognizes him. He’s sure he would have remembered her.

The diner is filled with kitschy decor and old pictures, rockabilly music playing softly over the stereo. The waitress is chatting with another girl, way down at the other end of the counter. She wears a retro, red kerchief knotted around her dark hair that is pinned up in interesting curls and he swears he saw something like it on a vintage pin-up poster once.

When she brings him the malted milkshake, it drips out over the edge of the tall glass onto the napkin. Extravagant. She plunks down the metal milkshake container for him too, and one of those extra-long spoons. The metal is so cold it burns a little when he picks it up to take a bite.

The malt chocolate is perfection. It’s tooth-achingly sweet, just like he remembers.

*

_“They're heading out through the alley. Barton?”_

_“On it.” While Fury and Natasha had sprinted to the rear of the building, he had gone straight for the car. Tires squeal as he tears across the gravel and weeds of an empty lot next door in order to reach the alley. There’s only one way the van could be headed._

_Clint is vaguely aware of Fury barking orders over comms, but Nat leaps in the open car window as he takes the final corner at a sharp angle, gaining sight of the van up ahead. She leans out the window, aiming a shot at the van’s tires as it accelerates into a densely-packed trailer park. He floors the accelerator and prays the residents stay indoors._

*

The burger was absolute heaven, with the reddest slice of tomato he’d seen in a long time and the saltiest, most perfectly juicy patty. He closed his eyes, lost in savoring it. It was as greasy and messy as the best kind of diner burger should be. He no longer cared that Nat has sent him on a wild goose chase. (Well, almost.)

“How’s the food--oh, uh--everything okay here?” He opened his eyes to see the waitress eyeing him funny. It’s enough to make him self-consciously grab a couple napkins to wipe his mouth as he nods and swallows a large bite, mopping up ketchup from the plate with the last few fries.

“Thanks. It was great.” It’s _gone_ , oh well. One last swallow of that chocolate shake, toasty with malt. The powder residue of the malt burned in his nostrils.

“Can I get the check?”

*

_“Where’s Romanoff?”_

_“Checking the fence. She was right behind me.” The van chase had not gone as planned. It was an hour later when Clint finally limped back into the diner to find Nick waiting for them at a booth by the front window._

_Fury merely eyes Hawkeye’s bloodied knuckles and the obvious knife-slash across the left shoulder of his fleece, exposing the tactical vest beneath. It’s black on black, hardly noticeable, but his eyes go right to it._

_“I thought you said you turned it over to Fal...Sam,” Fury amends as a waitress stops to refill his coffee. “You had orders to turn it over to airborne.”_

_“We did.” Clint wipes the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, sliding into the booth. He has a clear line to the street, the door, the kitchen, the back hall. The window, in a pinch. “We, uh, ran into a few more friends before Sam got there.” He pictures the shatter of glass if he had to use the window, calculates where to land in the flowerbed outside in order to best pivot and take position. “It’s handled.”_

_Fury only raises an eyebrow. “Well...you want something to eat?”_

_Clint’s heartbeat is steady but he can feel, dimly, the tunnel walls close around him. His bow muscles ache but he’d feel better if he had an arrow nocked right this second, despite the placid and unsuspecting diner patrons around them. “Not hungry,” he bites off, not focusing very well on the words but he's ready. Primed. For nothing or everything._

_Tries for a grin, fails. Fury’s look darkens with concern and suspicion. “Well, too bad. You’re getting a milkshake.” He signals the waitress, ignoring Clint._

_Hawkeye can’t think._

_No, that’s not right._

_He can’t think of anything but this. The natural gas line at the back of the kitchen, the unprotected CO2 tanks under the Coke machines. One arrow is all it would take._

_It gets worse every time, this narrow place. The afterburn. The focus helps him sight his target, but then it burns too deep, follows him around like the hand of a ghost pulling him back to the adrenaline, the shock, the pressure. Eyesight too pinpoint and too wide at once, taking everything in._

_Fury’s talking. Clint tries again._

_Anything? Anything but this. The old man in the back booth with a miniature oxygen tank. Oh God, no._

_“Barton?”_

_Clint can’t shake it. One arrow._

_Then, Nat._

_She knocks gently on the glass from the other side of the window, right beside him. Her bottom lip splits open and spills a trickle of dark red blood that she licks up, cat-like, when she grins at him._

_He wakes out of it, a little. Turns to Fury. “A milkshake. Sure.”_

*

The banquet room at the back of the diner was locked when he came out of the restroom after paying the check, which was the reason he found himself smiling at the tall dark-haired waitress in some approximation of harmless, friendly conversation.

“No more bomber at the Bomber, huh? Where’d it go?”

Her eyebrow quirks. “You’ve been gone a while, I guess...They took it to a museum down in Salem years ago.”

 _Gone a while_. Well. “Didn’t there used to be a bunch of old pictures of it? Did they take those, too?”

The woman looks at him funny, calculating. He’s more and more convinced she was there on that day, but he doesn’t care. As far as the diner is concerned, someone broke into a storage bin on a gloomy November afternoon, then the thief took off in a van and crashed through a fence. No Hydra, no car chase, no skirmish. No bullets, no blood. (Certainly no weaponized neurotoxins, either; he wasn’t supposed to overhear that conversation about the mysterious cargo in the van, but it wasn’t his fault if Fury kept forgetting how strong Clint’s hearing aids were.) If the waitress glimpsed Hawkeye that day, she saw an amateur hiker who came in for a bite to eat after grazing his knuckles during an overly enthusiastic weekend excursion.

“No, the pictures are still here. In the back, if you wanna look.” She’s polite about it. They’re both pretending that he didn’t already know this. She simply unlocks the back room and then returns to the front register to count her tips.

Inside, the banquet room is dim, light filtering in through opaque window panes. Folding tables and chairs cluster at one end and framed photos and newspaper clippings line the wall, but that’s not what he’s here for.

Because son of a bitch if the guts of the gunner’s nest aren’t right here in front of him.

*

_Natasha’s eyes glittered and color bloomed high on her cheekbones when she came inside to join them at the booth. She dabbed at her bloody lip with a wet napkin and updated Fury on something she found at the back fence, but her eyes land on Clint. She sees he is stuck in it, the narrow place, the blown-wide field of terrible calm, too much and nothing at all. Pinned._

_She sees every exit and potential explosive that he does, probably has another four exits worked out that he hasn’t even considered; she carries on a conversation with Nick but her eyes focus only on Clint. Asking if he wants what she does. Saying, without a word,_ You don’t need that arrow _. You need something else. I know what you need._

_Her eyes are light. Not like triumph. Like abandon. He’s got someone else’s blood still wet down his pants leg where Fury didn’t see and a feeling across the fine-tuned muscles of his shoulders like he needs to either collapse or rip something apart. He wants to take every fiber of this adrenaline and fuck her against the wall with what he needs in that moment, and he sees that maybe she thinks about it too._

_He closes his eyes. He relaxes his grip on the bow and the nocked arrow under the table, one finger at a time._

*

The plane itself and the glass walls of the gunner’s nest might be somewhere in a museum, but all the machinery from its insides lie disassembled before him.

Naptha and solvent cling to his fingers as he looks through the battered items. Pre-addressed shipping labels for the museum lie in a pile to the side of the boxes, this is evidently waiting to be shipped. Clint picks through loose parts, considers a broken altimeter, a corroded gimbal joint. With a sinking feeling, he realizes that half of this junk is not even from the B-17. The owners must have been collecting random military aviation parts for decades, hoping to frankenstein something together.

He has to be quick. In another minute the waitstaff will notice the unlocked banquet door, or the waitress will come back to check on him. He considers breaking in later that night so he can take his time, then groans thinking of the hassle. For all he knows, Natasha intended for him to visit the actual plane, not this magpie horde.

Unless--

At the bottom of the box among broken bits of triodes, he glimpses the round knob of a tuning dial from an old radio transmitter, five or six centimeters across. It’s just the right age. Still connected to a metal rim indicating frequencies in tiny hash marks around the edge. He rubs his thumb over the curlicue script of the General Electric logo imprinted on it, and palms the pleasing heft of the metal.

If he holds it up to the light, he can just see a mark scored into the rim where the frequencies are written, a scratch new enough to make the metal shine bright silver from under the gunmetal gray of the surface patina.

If he turns it over, right under that mark something else stands out, a similarly new etching, its letters crooked and cramped. Pictures her wielding the sharp point of a blade, carving the words after the fight that day. _Hi Birdie_. Checking the fence my ass, Natasha, you liar. Her blade the sharp point around which something in him revolves a little, in finding it.

*

_“Agent Romanoff, do you want to tell me why I’m already catching flak for that little stunt you pulled back there?” Nick puts down his cell phone and gives her a sour look across the shiny red expanse of the diner table._

_“I’m offended,” Clint says before Natasha can answer. “I was there, too.” It’s the first words he manages that don’t need to be bitten off, too sharp and too bright. The milkshake is cold and pure in his glass and the malt is a balm. Nat steals the extra metal cup and presses its chill to her cut lip, watches him. His lips almost pucker at the sweet burn as he takes another sip._

_There’s that brightness between them. That blood-quick look in her eye like a dare._

_Fury is already standing, paying the check so they can leave. Hawkeye will never get to finish that damn milkshake. Probably the best milkshake he’s ever had, but oh well, one taste and now it’s time to go. Fury’s phone is blowing up with messages and with a final huff of annoyance at the name on the screen, he simply hits the green button and passes the phone to Natasha as they head to the parking lot._

_“Phil, I can explain,” Natasha says into the phone, calm as always._

_She’s still explaining when they reach the SUV. Nat aims a subtle look at the dark patch on Clint’s black pants leg where a Hydra agent bled out all over him, only an hour ago. He raises an eyebrow and glances at the matching dark patch on the back of her calf. She doesn’t mention that part to Phil._

_She pulls the phone away from her ear for a moment so Phil can't hear and gestures to the back seat."_ _There’s a reason SHIELD always springs for black leather interiors,” she shrugs and climbs into the vehicle after him._

*

The radio dial isn’t much. It’s enough.

Her mark indicated a frequency. The dial itself is from an old transceiver, the kind you tuned carefully when listening for messages on low-band radio frequencies. A transmission range nobody used anymore, only seen on that kind of antique equipment.

Not the kind of thing you can use to signal over continents, over oceans, over firewalls. A frequency from gunner’s nest to ground. Enemy sighted. End of mission. Target destroyed, over. Stand down.

_You don’t need that arrow._

When he drops it back into the box, it makes a satisfying clunk against the tangle of objects, settling in the half-gloom. He’s memorized the number of the frequency.

Not the type of frequency he’d think to check normally, but he doesn’t need a B-17 transceiver to check it now. He just needs to tell his computer where to look.

And wait.

*

20170417.1750 GMT Gunners Nest to Exile do you copy

20170417.1801 GMT Gunners Nest to Exile frequency now encrypted and monitored transmit when ready over

 

20170420.0332 GMT Gunners Nest to Exile do you read

20170420.0335 GMT Gunners Nest to Exile transmit when ready over

20170420.0339 GMT Gunners Nest to Exile Sam says hi over

 

20170501.2301 GMT Gunners Nest to Exile do you copy

20170501.2302 GMT Gunners Nest to Exile getting tired of your shit

20170501.2310 GMT Gunners Nest to Exile hope you and the Capsicle are having fun wherever you are not even a postcard you bastards

20170501.2311 GMT Gunners Nest to Exile last two not from me also guess whos here with me over

 

20170601.2008 GMT Gunners Nest to Exile transmit when ready over

20170601.2009 GMT Gunners Nest to Exile whats a guy got to do to get a text back

 

20170701.0102 GMT Gunners Nest to Exile goddamnit

20170701.0104 GMT Gunners Nest to Exile I really fucking miss you

20170702.0104 GMT Gunners Nest to Exile Im drunk a little so also

20170702.0105 GMT I really miss fucking you

  
*

_She doesn’t hang up on Phil, simply extends her arm into the front seat and drops the phone into Nick’s lap in the driver’s seat. He sighs ends the call, Coulson’s tinny, querulous squawk silenced._

_There’s talk of the next mission. There’s talk of consequences. SHIELD is tied up and commercial flights are out of the question. There’s talk of lying low before a team can extract them safely._

_Nick has a million things he needs to tell them, a whole little lecture about what happened in Portland, but Clint’s not listening. The adrenaline has transmuted into something new and better. There’s a kind of wide-open hum in his veins. Addictive._

_Her hand rests on the leather seat, within reach. He hates that she had to wake him from it, that it got so bad after such a minor fight, but there had been that question in her eyes. Had he imagined it?_ I know what you need _. He’s half hard thinking about it. He can only look at the pale skin of her hand, thinking that if he touches her an actual spark might burn him._

 _A feeling like he could consume her that instant, if she turned to him and said_ yes _._

_His finger twitches on the black leather. Nat’s eyes flicker over to meet his, her expression unreadable. She could be planning to abandon them at the next gas station, she could be plotting his death._

_But then she smiles at him, crooked, and it’s just enough to make the split in her lip crack open. Her smile turns into something a little darker. A drop of blood wells on her bottom lip and she reaches up to wipe it away with one finger._

_Sucks her finger into her mouth quick, feral._

_She watches the filthy shudder that runs down his spine._

*

20170916.1758 GMT how was the milkshake birdie

 

20170916.1801 GMT Almost as good as getting your message after all this time good goddamn woman

20170916.1802 GMT Is Birdie going to be my nickname forever now

 

20170916.1805 GMT afraid so

20170916.1806 GMT maybe we can test it out in person

 

20170916.1807 GMT Don't tease are you coming back or not

 

20170916.1808 GMT been a tough time lately on the run

20170916.1808 GMT just need to take care of a few things

20170916.1809 GMT sorry to disappoint but its just for the night

20170916.1809 GMT bad things are coming and its just going to get harder

 

20170916.1809 GMT Birdie to Exile stop setting me up for bad jokes like that

20170916.1810 GMT Race you to the valley

 

20170916.1811 GMT thats what he said

20170916.1811 GMT where do you think im messaging you from

20170916.1812 GMT get ur ass over here barton

*

_“Nick, take the next exit south,” she says, and her eyes gleam, dark as a deathmatch. “It’s a bit of a drive, but I know a safe house where we can spend the night.”_

_In the gray twilight, he couldn’t swear to the arc of electricity when he finally touches her hand but he feels it in his veins._

_He can’t tell whether she wants to fight or to fuck, but it’s exactly, exquisitely the same feeling inside him. A fine, even tremble threatens to spill and spill inside him, though it’s fucking ecstasy to hold it back._

_He doesn’t mind that spilling if she’s there with that wicked grin._

_Doesn’t mind spilling at all._

  
*

**Author's Note:**

> (Who else is in agony waiting for Infinity War? D: D: D: I need all my bbs to live and be happy but also I live for the angst, so. Agony.)
> 
> So! Yes, the Bomber is a real diner (though I took liberties with the interior layout) and yes, it’s technically in Milwaukie/Oak Grove, not Portland, and yes, the actual plane used to be parked out front on concrete pillars and had been there since the 1950s and is now in a museum in Salem. Please go to the Bomber! Their burgers are amazing, the patty melt is a special treat, shakes are old fashioned malted style if you like ‘em like Clint, and the people who work there are solid fucking gold, or at least they were as late as 2009, the last time I lived in the neighborhood. Shoutout to the tall rockabilly dreamboat of a waitress who used to work there, I always had a crush on you and maybe I wasn’t the only one…
> 
> The Bomber Restaurant: http://www.thebomber.com/
> 
> Info about WWII radios used in B-17s cribbed partially from here: https://www.radioblvd.com/WWII_Communications_%20Equipment.htm (All errors/poetic but scientifically unsound interpretations of radio magic and signal equipment wizardry are solely my own.)
> 
> The phrase “A fine, even tremble” is borrowed from Paulann Petersen’s wonderful poem Pragmatics: https://books.google.com/books?id=YuLmkOjTklsC&lpg=PA109&pg=PA109#v=onepage&q&f=false It’s about bees, not electricity or sex, but really. Same diff.


End file.
